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Where to begin...
I dont really know how to start this but, it seems like a good place to finally lay all of this out.
Im currently 21 nearly 22 and Ive just spent my first year at university away from my family, and since living away from home it seems my mental state has gotten worse compared to when Im at home, nothing severe, but just enough for me to want help and have a chance at having a normal, happy life.
From the age of 9 I have received emotional and occasional physical abuse and emotional manipulation from my father who has caused me depression, self harm, a suicide attempt, social anxiety, agoraphobia and mild OCD ticks.
My dad used to snap at me and call me dumb and all other kinds of names because I couldnt do my homework and instead of explaining how to do a maths puzzle he would call me names and get angry and tell me to rip it up and put it in the bin and tell the teachers I couldnt do it which resulted in me being in tears and running away from the situation. My dad was more intelligent than my Mum and she helped where she could but I always asked my dad because when he was calm (a rare occasion) he would actually help me and did know how to explain things to me to help me to understand.
He used to snap at me at the smallest things, one time I accidently spilt a tiny bit of water on the carpet and when I walked over to the end table to put my drink down, I turned around and he grabbed me by my shirt so that I was lifted off the ground and he yelled in my face, his face filled with anger. I dont even remember what he said because I was so terrified; he then threw me across the room where I landed awkwardly, hitting my back on the hard edge of the sofa before hitting the floor, scrambling to my feet and running away to my room.
Me and my dad used to argue often about all kinds of things, we used to argue about me going out to play with friends, wanting to watch something on TV, going on school trips, staying up late etc and his reactions of him constantly lashing out in some way eventually terrified me to such crippling anxiety that I started having trouble sleeping, experienced intrusive thoughts and had nightmares as well as starting the beginning of my never ending depression. I still have trouble sleeping even now, and used to be yelled at for that too, but I really couldnt and cant help it.
I also was bullied through primary school and secondary school so there was no escape from the abuse no matter where I went. I felt dumb, useless, too weird to be accepted by anyone and at the same time, every time I make friends I run out of effort to make new ones, because I dont feel worth it and I know its going to break me and my paranoia and social anxiety to do so.
His emotional abuse eventually broke me and he used that against me and started emotionally manipulating me.
He has hit me a few times when hes really lost it with me.
I got so terrified of him that I just did whatever he wanted me to do, I didnt say much because I was afraid that whatever I said would be wrong and that Id get yelled at, called names or hit again. I also got so terrified of the intrusive thoughts that I developed agoraphobia and then my dad would try and force me outside for no real reason just to have a laugh at my own expense.
Mid way through secondary school I started self harming. I only stopped cause my friends (AKA the ones who were bullying me) found out, as I used to use bracelets in school to cover the scars up and in one lesson one of the teachers tried to confiscate them, I did as I was told because I was afraid of getting into trouble and then my friends saw and teased me about it, so to stop the teasing, I stopped. It was hard at first, but I (proudly) havent done it since. I have thought about it quite a lot, especially since living on my own at uni, but I havent ever acted on it since. I also overcame my agoraphobia, but the social anxiety has only ever gotten worse over the years.
My Dad also used to stop our friends from seeing me and my brother, who was also yelled at for not eating certain foods which he had expressed he didnt like and now because of it my brother is a very fussy eater and doesnt eat out in places often. My dad used to hear knocks at the door from our friends and he would answer it and say theyre grounded, go away. Which used to terrify our friends and eventually we lost friends because people also grew afraid of him. My Dad also once made a sexual comment towards me and my breasts to my brother saying her boobs are getting big arent they? in a kind of flirty manner while I was bowling in a low cut vest top, in my early teens, which when my brother told me, disturbed me and has made me cover myself up ever since. He also used to tease me about the type of underwear I wore and so now I dont feel comfortable wearing anything but womens boxers because of the way he used to make me feel in normal womens underwear.
He used to pick out stuff for me to wear, a lot of it when I was a pre-teen, to early teens he used to pick stuff from the boys section and persuade me that, that was what I wanted to wear. As I got older I stayed as a tomboy kind of girl which for some reason frustrated him and he tried to persuade me into wearing more feminine things, which didnt work this time around.
We have moved house a lot too when I was younger and this obviously caused me to make friends over and over and still to this day I find it really hard to because of the social anxiety and paranoia I experience when meeting new people.
Meeting new people makes me so anxious, and as Im studying music and play bass, I meet new people all the time and have to network to get gigs and shows, and it stresses me out and makes me so irritated at myself that I cant just talk to people in a relaxed, easy way. I always get so tense and I start worrying about what Im doing with my hands and body language and if Im keeping eye contact, if what I said came out the right way and if the person Im talking to laughs, I will laugh with them even if I dont find what they said as funny, I will watch their face and match their expressions all the time. When the experience of talking to them is over I get a sense of relief briefly and then I get irritated at myself that I couldnt relax in the whole conversation. Admittedly, sometimes at networking events, I tend to drink 1-3 pints or so to relax myself so that I can talk to people easier, but as I know and my girlfriend and friends thankfully pointed out, thats really not healthy or a good way to go about dealing with this. Ive been trying recently to not do that and to find other ways of relaxing myself.
The bullies eventually stopped when I was about 15/16 because a friend of an ex friend saw me getting picked on by a bunch of girls and told the teachers and luckily the girls didnt bother me again.
I was in bottom classes for everything which just made my dads words of me being dumb and thick more true in my head, and now that the bullies werent around, I realized I had to go and make more friends again since I once again had no-one. Which of coursed just increased my social anxiety at the time.
Soon after I had made friends again with an old primary school friend, but soon after my dad starting arguing with the whole house and there would be heated arguments almost every night between my mum and my dad. I would often sit upstairs in my room and I would hear plates being smashed and raised voices and stomping around and again, it was terrifying.
A couple of years later and my dad is barely at the house, he was always at the gym and used to do big triathlons like the iron man etc.
A year later at the age of 14/15 and my Nan died, my great uncle died, both I loved very much and then months after my parents split up. It broke me. There was just so much trauma and devastation that I couldnt cope, I went through years of depression after that and just really hated life at school and at home and felt numb for what seemed like forever. I used music as a coping mechanism and had been writing songs since I was 13 to try and deal with it all, but theres only so many times you can write the same story before even you start getting bored of it yourself. I also then found out that my dad had been cheating on my Mum for a few years and that he was also going to have a child with his new girlfriend, which was very hard to deal with on top of everything else.
When I was 17 I wrote a suicide note and was going to take an overdose of whatever I could find in the family medicine cabinet. In the end (thankfully) I chickened out but I had already sent my suicide note to my best friend at the time. The next day she told the teachers and they brought my mum in and told her everything and it broke me to see her cry like that. It was possibly the worst and best thing she couldve done. It was devastating at the time and news spread around the school and I got picked on for a while after that all came out, rumours spread that I had been sent to rehab and all this rubbish and it was just awful and then one of the teachers called me selfish which only made me feel worse at the time and still hurts a bit even now. But after a lot of journaling I slowly became happier for a while.
I do still have depressive downward spiral days/weeks, but its nowhere near as bad as it was.
Since being at uni I have started picking up more OCD ticks also (I know this isnt an OCD forum but I wanted to mention it), its only mild OCD, just with checking bathroom locks and checking to see if theres anything hiding in the dark in my room before bed as well as doing something productive to earn the right to sleep. I dont know if these ticks are linked, or if they even warrant as ticks, but I thought Id mention them just in case. Also I wasnt aware of my social anxiety until recently, I knew it was there but I didnt think it was as bad as it is and the same goes for the possible mild OCD, I thought the intrusive thoughts and the way I thought of them was normal, if it wasnt for my amazing girlfriend, I wouldnt know otherwise until years later probably.
So, thats pretty much my story....so sorry its really long.
I havent ever received therapy or counselling for any of these issues so that is why I have said possible for most of these, although I am pretty certain I have social anxiety and struggle still with depression, but recently since starting a new academic year at university and having to deal with all these issues more than usual, I feel like I really should start dealing with these things now before they possibly get worse or affect my grades and I just want to move past this now and live a happy life finally.
Any help is appreciated, Im new to this site and Im still getting used to how it all works and things haha. :)
